Augment Ventures June 2020 Newsletter

We asked our Managing Director, Sonali Vijayavargiya to share with us her best advice for entrepreneurs looking to create and build diverse teams. Check out her three tips to improving diversity and culture across your own organization:

Include.

• • Research shows that highlighting similarities rather than individual differences, contributes to feelings of inclusivity. Leaders should clearly communicate goals and responsibilities across the team to increase individual ownership. Long-term, this increases team pride and organizational effectiveness.

Celebrate.

• • Diversity spans far past race and gender. Teams are filled with introverts and extroverts, poets and quants, big-picture thinkers and in-the-weeds executors. Broadcast individual wins and personality traits that add value to the broader team. Diverse teams thrive when they feel empowered.

Measure.

• Keep it simple. Improving, let alone overhauling, diversity hiring metrics may feel like an aggressive undertaking. Pick one key performance indicator (KPI) that is easy to measure and possible to achieve. Write down 6-month, 12-month, and 18-month goals and track them accordingly.

• “Diversity is the first step in creating innovative teams, inclusion is what unlocks the potential.” – Sonali Vijayavargiya

LARQ | This reusable bottle cleans itself and is on sale | Mashable (Use discount code “augment20” to get 20% off your LARQ Bottle).

LLamasoft | LLamasoft to Host Tenth Annual LLamaCon Supply Chain Conference as a Virtual Event | Business Wire

“In the midst of a pandemic, I don’t think we ever expected to see one of the most energized social justice movements in the past few decades. Emboldened by the movement, many are engaging in more frank discussions about the role race plays when it comes to funding opportunities for early-stage tech companies.“
Read the full article here.

“More than 80% of venture firms don’t have a single black investor and just 1% of venture-funded startup founders are Black. It is no longer enough for firms to just ‘be progressive’ — they must be anti-racist.”
Learn more here.